Imperial Purple

Dan Simmons
Drood
Quercus 2009

Drood is somewhere in the region of Dan Simmons’ 25th novel and it shows. The writing is excellent and gripping; the characters deep and entertaining and handling of the supernatural elements very well done. I enjoyed it nearly all the way through.

The narrator is the author Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone, The Woman in White, etc) and it concerns mainly his relationship with his friend and fellow author Charles Dickens (whose last book – The Mystery of Edwin Drood – was never finished). Dickens was involved in a train crash at a place called Staplehurst in which he was lucky not to be killed. He tells Collins about a mysterious character named Drood who was also at the scene. From Dickens’ description we aren’t sure whether this is a real person, a supernatural being or simply the result of stress and possible concussion from the accident.

We learn of Dickens’ great interest in mesmerism and his attempts at practical manipulation using it. We learn that Collins suffered badly from some sort of neuralgic complaint which required him to take increasing doses of laudanum (tincture of opium) to control the pain.

Thus we are set up for uncertainty. Collins, because of his heavy drug use, is an uncertain narrator and it becomes increasingly and convincingly difficult for him to distinguish his opium dreams from reality. Similarly, we aren’t sure if Dickens really saw Drood or whether he was a result of the accident or indeed, was just the product of Dickens’ imagination.

Add to this an ex-police inspector who believes that Drood is a real figure, an Egyptian who lives literally in London’s underground. There are a number of sequence of underground opium dens and sewers which are ambiguously dreamlike. At one point Collins believes that he was captured by Drood and a ‘brain beetle’ inserted into his brain in an attempt to control him.

Throughout the book you remain in doubt about what is real and what isn’t and it makes for a gripping tale. The only problem I had was that Simmons seems to have had no idea either.

The book just sort of ends without a proper explanation. Dickens confesses (or at least Collins has a memory of him confessing) that it was all a practical joke based on Dickens first mesmerising Collins and then setting up an underground adventure where a mysterious boat trip turns out to have been two of his gardeners poling an old boat around the sewers. Like Collins’ character, I found this inherently unlikely.

But the alternative is that Drood is real. In which case there needs to be a proper conclusion where we find out what it is all about. This doesn’t happen and we are left with Collins making some brief notes nineteen years later that Drood and his minions have been following him around all this time. They don’t seem to do anything however so we have to assume this is all an opium-based illusion. This is weak and the functional equivalent of ‘and the boy woke up and found it was all a dream’.

So we are left with two possible explanations for the mysterious Drood, neither of which is particularly inspiring. After an entertaining 750 pages the reader deserves more than this. So, despite the excellence of the writing, I can only give it three and a half stars. Read and enjoy but expect to be disappointed at the end.